My Style

Recipes

Toddler/Motherhood

Actually the title of this post should be To Make New Year's Resolutions or Not To Make New Year's Resolutions...but I preferred the Shakespeare quote instead (blame my job for that one!!!).
Every year I make some sort of list of New Year's Resolutions and more often than not, by the time the calendar reads January 15 I've already abandoned all hope. Also, yesterday in church I heard a statistic that only 8% of Americans actually keep their resolutions. So I figured I was safe to just stay with the majority of Americans.

BUT, I had a nagging sense that I still needed to set some goals for myself. While I'm still working on my list, I already have a couple goals that I hope to meet in my life, not just in the year 2013. Hopefully my list will grow as the day goes on, I do have until January 1, 2013 to make the list so I've got time. :)

Here is my short list:

1.) Learn to say NO more - I often say yes to too many things: work events, church events, too many outings with friends or family, the need to keep my house spotless always, errands, adding items to my to do list...I could keep going. But the truth is, I'm exhausted! So I need to say no more to be able to take some time to rest and really enjoy life, instead of just trying to check things off my list (us Type A personalities love to have a list and check things off).

2.) Spend more time in the word - By following through with number 1, I will have more time for number 2, which is extremely important to me. I get so much encouragement and fuel by reading through the Bible and I always wish I allowed myself more time to soak up God's word. Well now that I put it out here in the blogospehere, I better keep it!

3.) Laugh when I get home from work, leave the stress there - This is huge. I often let whatever happened during my day (and whatever traffic I encountered on my way home) affect my mood as soon as I walk in the door. No one likes a cranky wife and Tolar doesn't deserve that.

Those are my top goals that I feel I need to apply to my life always and not just in the first two weeks of 2013. Wish me luck!

Are any of you setting goals or New Year's Resolutions? If you have some, share them in the comments section below. I'd love to hear about them and support you in your endeavor.

I'm linking up with Carly and Molly for their Final #YOLOMonday of 2012. Go check out their blogs and see everyone who links up. You might even find a new blog to follow.

What a great week this has been! It’s time for my fun High
Five For Friday post. As always, I’m linking up with Lauren over at From MyGrey Desk.

Here are the top 5 moments from this week (this was a hard
week to narrow down to just 5 things):

1.) JoJo’s first plane trip was a huge success! I was so
proud of our little pup.

2.) This was my nephew’s first Christmas and I was sent this
adorable little picture of him first thing on Christmas morning. Merry
Christmas to me.

Yeah, he knows he's cute.

3.) Every year Tolar and I take a picture in front of the
Christmas tree in our pajamas (including me without makeup on!).

4.) Here’s my man in his element. If you read his post from yesterday, you will see how much he loves guns and how much I don’t. (Check out
his sweet earmuffs, Tolar’s Dad bought those for me)

5.) It snowed 8 inches in Southern Illinois. We ended up
getting snowed in for a day and it was glorious. Our day consisted of watching
movies, eating yummy food, laughing, some sledding and my sister in law gave me
a Mary Kay facial (more on that coming soon!).

Hope your week and Christmas were spectacular – no one
really uses that word anymore. I’m bringing it back!

Tolar has quite the sense of humor - making me laugh constantly - so I thought I would share his humor with all of you lucky readers. Below is a guest post from Tolar, offering up 10 Things You Don't Know About Me, but Tolar thinks you should know.
Enjoy.

Thanks for the intro babe, no pressure at all!
As the fabulous Lindsay mentioned, I'm going to share a few things that make her my one and only. As silly as many of these may sound and as terrible as my humor may translate to text, I believe these are some of the little idiosyncrasies that make her who she is and keep me falling in love with her a little more every day.

1.) Lindsay does not appear to have any sports related talents. While she can run like a normal human being, throwing balls, swinging bats and shooting hoops are quite the hilarious sight to see. I find the fact that she has never been able to do a pull up in her life quite fascinating.

2.) The wife thoroughly enjoys watching So You Think You Can Dance and this has rubbed off on me. I truly believe her favorite part of the show is listening to my assessment of each performer and laughing at me in disbelief. This leads me to #3.

3.) One of Lindsay's favorite phrases is, "Who are you and what have you done with my husband?" This can be used in various scenarios. For instance, after one of my commentaries during So You Think You Can Dance, "Who are you and what have you done with my husband?" Or perhaps when I fold the laundry, take the trash out or have any sort of productive day before she gets home, "Who are you and what have you done with my husband?"

4.) My amazing wife is extremely uncomfortable with guns of any sort from BB to handguns and on up through rifles and shotguns, yet, she still married me. I won't quite call myself a "gun nut," but I do hunt and own a fairly respectable collection of firearms and it is one of my all time favorite pastimes, especially with my dad. This either shows a massive FAIL on wife's part or the extent of her affection for me by being able to overlook such a huge difference in our way of living.

5.) Lins can actually touch her tongue to her nose. Fellas, this is not as awesome as it sounds, but at the very same time, it is exactly as awesome as it sounds.

6.) Lindsay kills a very large portion of the spiders in our house. Tolar is not a fan. Now, before you go calling me a pansy, please note that I have had this discussion with several of my friends and they agree that spiders are icky.

7.) Mrs. Good Lookin' leaves me cute little notes hidden all throughout my suitcase when I travel for work. The amount of notes she leaves is typically tied to the length of the trip. The messages could be a simple "I love you" or a small letter filled with humor and love. I'm a sappy sentimental fella, so I keep many of them in my "Lins Box."

8.) Lindsay takes up about 85% of the closest space in our house. Now, there may be a lot of people out there thinking "duh!, she's a girl, you're a dude and that's what happens". But what you have to understand is that I get one quarter of the closet in our room which I get to share with SOME of her shoe collection. In case you're still thinking "Everyone saw this coming Tolar, why didn't you?" This part should come as a shocker to you. While she takes up most of the closet space she takes up less than 1/3 of the king size bed. The largest majority goes to our 7.5 lb. dog JoJo.

9.) My adorable, petite wife cannot stand to be scared. This is perhaps her greatest flaw because the horror-film loving kid in me loves to be scared and thus loves to scare any and all he comes in contact with. To this day, I have only scared Lindsay, intentionally, about 5 times. We disagree on the number. I feel I make a very strong case by arguing the definition of "intention."

10.) Lindsay wants three children, as do I, but she is absolutely terrified at the prospect of giving birth. Lindsay is not what I would consider "tough" when it comes to handling pain. So please keep me in your thoughts and prayers when we eventually have a child because I have a very strong feeling I will be the most hated man on earth when she is in the delivery room (don't worry, I fully plan on filling her "go bag" with sweet little notes so after she's finished yelling at me I can quickly begin filling my brownie point meter again).

I sincerely hope you have enjoyed learning a few things about Lindsay. I cannot image a life without that amazing smile and incredible heart. She brings joy to everyone she meets and that is why we all come back here day after day.

My December Birchbox arrived awhile ago, but this month has been so crazy that I didn't have much time to really go through all of the great products. So apologies for the delay. Here it is! Isn't the box so festive? I just love all of the decorations everywhere for Christmas and I love that Birchbox got into the spirit.

This was a pretty good box (which I normally love all of the boxes because I'm such a beauty junkie). Here is everything I got:

1.) Nick Chavez Advanced Volume Shampoo - I have incredibly fine and thin hair, so I always need more volume. The shampoo smells great, is purple (!!!!) and has helped add some more bounce to my otherwise lifeless hair (curling irons help too!).

2.)theBalm cosmetics Hot Mama! - This is a peachy blush that adds a bit of golden shimmer to my face. I love that; shimmer is always good - especially during the holidays.

3.) A cute tag for a gift - A maybe I'll use this on a New Year's gift since all of my Christmas packages have been opened. :)

5.) Chuao Chocolatier ChocoPod - I think its so funny that Birchbox includes snacks in a beauty box, but hey, I'll take it, especially if it is chocolate.

6.) Juice Beauty Stem Cellular Repair Cream - This is a cream that improves skin tone with Vitamin C and grape-derived resveratrol (I'll need to look up what that means). But I always love a new skin cream, so I'll take it!

And as an extra bonus, Birchbox included a gift certificate to Rent the Runway good for $50 off an order. I don't know if you have ever heard for Rent the Runway before, but its an awesome site where you can rent designer gowns for a special event, at a really affordable price. And with this coupon, the dress will be extremely friendly to my wallet. I hope there is no expiration date so I can use this coupon for my company's Gala next October (which means another blog post will come after that)!

Wishing you and yours a very magical Christmas season full of joy, love and peace. I pray that you all have time to spend with your family and reflect on the best gift we ever received: Jesus. Merry Christmas to everyone!

If you read this post here, you know that I am constantly on the search for makeup and beauty products that keep my skin from looking too oily. Well I have found a product that I think is a keeper and it works wonderfully to combat shine.

I use the lotion each morning before I apply my foundation and I have definitely seen a difference in the way my skin looks during the middle of the day. By using this lotion, I have found that I don't need to touch up my powder as often as when I don't wear it. I can certainly tell a difference when I don't use mattifying lotion. The lotion leaves my skin feeling super smooth, but with no grease or oily residue. Plus there is no shine!

One trick I learned is that I should let the lotion dry completely before I begin applying my makeup. So I usually apply the lotion as soon as I get out of the shower to allow it some time to soak into my skin and dry. Then I just go about my morning routine and apply my makeup as normal.

The bottle is so cute and upon first use, I was uncertain how to get any lotion to actually come out of the bottle. So I did a little searching on youtube and found this video (from another beauty lover who likes the product) and she demonstrated how to use the product and get the lotion to squirt out (squirt is such a funny word to me). Don't worry if yours doesn't squirt out, the cap does twist off.

So check out the avon site to find all of the mark products and if you have oily skin like me, I highly recommend this great lotion!

This is quite possibly my most favorite Friday of the year, because it is the Friday before I get an ENTIRE week off for Christmas!!! YAY!

Each Friday, I link up with Lauren who blogs over at From My Grey Desk for her awesome High Five For Friday post. Go check out her blog and see some of the other bloggers who link up - its so fun!
So here are my top five moments from the week:

1.) Tolar and I had to part ways in the Orlando airport at the beginning of the week. I hate having to say goodbye to him and fly home alone, but he made this solo trip worth it. Tolar upgraded my ticket to first class!

2.) While Tolar was gone, our cute JoJo kept his side of the bed warm. (See how he is nuzzled up to Tolar's pillow and has tucked his legs under the covers? Such a cute sight to wake up to!)

3.) My cute little bug of a nephew warms my heart with each photo and I love his 3 month old photo!

4.) Christmas cookies are so awesome - especially when they are delivered to you! Some sweet friends of ours delivered the plate of cookies to our doorstep and my boss made bags of cookies for everyone in the department.

5.) Tolar made me a skittles flower. Enough said.

I hope you all had a great week and that you get some time to rest and relax in the coming week. Enjoy your weekend and if you hit the malls for some last minute Christmas shopping - best of luck to you!

I hope preparing for the holidays haven't gotten the best of you yet. Yes, this is the most wonderful time of the year, but with that can also come tons of stress. Take a few moments to just sit down and relax. And perhaps watch a cute and/or funny video on youtube.

For today I give you this cute little bulldog. Soak up his adorableness and just allow yourself a moment to smile.

(And for those of you worried about the little guy, because I was - here is this video too!)

I haven’t posted anything on the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut because I am at a loss for what to say. No words I can put together will bring those precious children, teachers and administrators back. I can sympathize with the families’ pain and imagine what they are going through, but I don’t know exactly the emotions they are experiencing. Just imagining their pain brings tears to my eyes. I sure hope I never have to go through something like that.

But through this tragedy, greatness can develop. We can turn this nation, this world, around. As I have said before, all we need is love and grace. We never know what people are going through so we shouldn’t judge them; we should just love them through their hurt and problems.

I was so happy when I read that NBC News reporter Ann Curry put a call out on twitter asking people to commit to 26 acts of kindness to honor the people who lost their lives in Newtown. (Read her article here) So I’m putting Ann’s call to action here on Pursuit of Pink, asking my lovely readers to do the same thing. Let’s perform random acts of kindness throughout our days and work to change this world. The world needs more love and less hatred.

Your random act of kindness can be anything, even something as simple as making eye contact with someone when you pass them on the street and wishing them a nice day. Whatever you feel led to do.
There is even a buzzfeed that was created to track the tweets about the acts of kindness, check it out here. Maybe the link will inspire you.

Let’s show this world that we can love and we can love complete strangers with our whole hearts. Thanks for being amazing readers. Thanks for your support! Now let’s support others in our daily lives.

Also, I'm over at The Chiffon Diary joining some other fab bloggers to give away some awesome prizes in honor of Nicholl's birthday. Perhaps you can enter that giveaway and if you win, gift the prize to someone. Now that's a random act of kindness! Go check out the giveaway here.

One thing I love about reading other blogs is getting to know the people who write each blog. So I’m going to give you a chance to get a peek into my life, with 10 random facts you might not know about me.

1.) I’m so used to city life and having street lamps shine into my bedroom each night that when I go home to my parents' house for a visit, the bedroom is much too dark for me.

2.) It takes me forever to eat peel and eat shrimp because I have to clean my hands and nails in between each shrimp. I can’t stand to have dirty nails.

3.) Speaking of nails, if I am watching a movie at home, chances are pretty high that I am going to paint my nails during said movie.

4.) I have a problem with being still and just sitting (refer to number 3).

5.) Apparently I say “shore” instead of “sure.”

6.) I get asked on a daily basis where I am from because of my accent (maybe one day I’ll post a video so you can actually hear me).

7.) My mom is still the first person I want to call whenever I’m upset.

8.) When I was a child, I really wanted to be a teacher when I grew up and sometimes I wish I had stuck with that plan.

9.) My sister and I met two wonderful friends when I was four (she was six) and we are still friends with them today. In fact, we’re more than friends, we are family. 9a.)I love telling people that I have friends in my life that I have known for 26 years!

10.) If I could go back to college knowing what I know now, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat!

So there you have it – 10 random facts. I could keep going, but I’ll save 10 more random facts for another post. Why don’t you leave a random fact about yourself in the comments section below?

Tolar and I just went on an awesome trip to Walt Disney World. We took our sweet niece with us and had just an amazing time. And we owe so much to my FABULOUS Uncle - he has worked at Disney since I was born and he has blessed me with so many amazing trips to Disney throughout my life. This trip was so much fun, it was great to experience the trip with my family and to celebrate Tolar's first visit to Disney.
Enjoy the photos from our wonderful trip!!!

For once I'm kinda wishing Friday would stick around a little longer than normal. This week Tolar and I headed down to Florida to visit my awesome Uncle and take our sweet Niece to Disney World with us. We are having a blast and I want the weekend to go by reallllllllly slow. But alas, Friday is here, so its time for my top five moments from the week.

I'm linking up with Lauren who blogs over at From My Grey Desk for her fabulous High Five For Friday link up.

1.) My church had our Dream Team Christmas party and we had a blast. Tolar brought some amazing entertainment, along with a group of some other very talented people. It was a night celebrating some fabulous people with awesome servant hearts, sharing laughter with good friends and celebrating the real reason for the season - Jesus!

2.) We finally got our Christmas tree put up. I have always wanted to wrap the tree in ribbon, I think it turned out pretty well.

3.) I tried a hairstyle I learned on The Small Things Blog- you should check out Kate's blog, it was the first blog I ever started following.

4.) This trip to Disney World is Tolar's first time. Thanks to my amazing Uncle for an already super fun time visiting the parks.

5.) Day one we went to Epcot and Animal Kingdom and we had a blast!

We are heading to more Disney parks today and tomorrow, I'm sure I'll have tons of pictures for you next week. I hope your week has been great. See ya Monday!